Art Jericho is a welcome new addition to Oxford’s galleries. As an exhibition space, it works well and it is fast establishing a reputation for mounting innovative and interesting work.

Nature’s Idyll — Landscape Visions in the 21st Century is no exception. It brings together the work of three young landscape artists who explore, in their own very different ways, what they perceive landscape to be, the impact of man’s intrusion into the natural world and the interplay between thought, emotion and the environment.

Sofia Dahlgren draws on the Scandinavian tradition of landscape painting. Using oil on board, she works in soft greys, creams, and browns to create isolated figures against a background of mountains, ice and tundra. In Sleepwalker, a lone, vulnerable figure drifts to the centre of a landscape redolent with dormant menace.

Janet Brown uses a cartoon format to portray stylised landscapes, a technique that serves well to mitigate her images of the most bizarre and horrific events befalling both animals and people. In Abundance, a helpless woman lies on a complex background of vegetation, woven together like spaghetti and brimming with vibrantly coloured frogs, which also invade her body and leap with malevolent intent through the sky.

By contrast, Sophie Baker works in oil in a much softer and gentler style. In Darkness 1, 2 and 4 she explores the way light pollution dramatically changes our vision of trees leaching their dark intense greens foliage to a brittle chrome. Upstream 1 and 2 (pictured) both seemingly address unspoiled landscapes beautifully portrayed in soft muddied colours that move from air-force blues to Stygian greens and steel greys, and yet within both there is evidence of fly tipping and man’s inexorable encroachment into the natural world.

The exhibition is at Art Jericho, King Street, Oxford. It runs until November and is open Wednesday to Saturday 10am-5pm.